With Notarianni's loss in Lackawanna County commissioner race, a page is turned

May 21—In almost every election, incumbent elected officials lose, but the primary Tuesday felt different.

Mainly, because Lackawanna County Commissioner Jerry Notarianni went down in the Democratic commissioner primary.

Other incumbents lost, notably North Pocono School Director Bill Burke, Scranton School Directors Sarah Cruz, Ro Hume and Carol Cleary, Dunmore Councilman Vince Amico, Jessup council members Rella Scassellati and Craig Shander and Riverside School Director Leigh Ann Bieber Gasper.

Notarianni's loss ranks as more significant, not because he held a county office, but because of his deep connections to local Democratic history.

"This is a watershed-type election," former Democratic Commissioner Mike Washo said. "You can see a little of that in a lot of elections. In Jim McNulty, Dave Wenzel."

McNulty was elected Scranton mayor in 1981 after defeating the Democratic Party-backed incumbent, Gene Hickey, in the primary. Wenzel, a Republican, defeated McNulty four years later.

"But there's more in this," Washo said of Notarianni's loss.

Notarianni was born in the early 1950s, an era when the county Democratic Party was ascendant. The party's rise was jump-started by its candidate's victory in the 1933 district attorney's race, an outcome that stunned Republicans, who at the time outnumbered Democrats more than 3 to 1.

The candidate who won that race, 26-year-old Michael J. Eagen,went on to become a county common pleas court judge, then a state Supreme Court justice and chief justice. Over the years, he had plenty of help from Michael F. Lawler, whom he had named his chief county detective after winning the district attorney's office. In 1935, Lawler won a county commissioner seat and eventually became a legendary county Democratic chairman and state power broker, who helped Lawler get on the Supreme Court.

Ironically, on Friday, three days after Notarianni lost, the county unveiled a monument to Eagen on Courthouse Square.

Maybe Notarianni didn't rise to Eagen's heights, but he's tied to the old-guard Democrats in a way most local Democrats no longer are.

"I kind of am. I was young," he said Friday. "They were older."

Notarianni grew up in politics hearing the stories about Eagen and Lawler, which he can still tell. He met and knew a lot of the players who knew Eagen and Lawler and took control of local Democratic politics later. In the old days of Democratic politics, you often frustratingly waited your turn to rise, though Notarianni didn't in a successful 1985 run for county register of wills. Out of that victory, he fashioned a long political career himself.

Notarianni served one term as register of wills, before running unsuccessfully for Scranton mayor in 1989. A Democratic state committeeman at times, he stayed politically active behind the scenes for most of the 1990s, became Scranton Democratic chairman in 1998 and served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2000. He added county Democratic chairman to his duties in 2002 and remained active after giving up both chairmanships a few years later. He was elected a commissioner in 2015.

He defines the term "Democratic stalwart."

His loss continued a trend that enveloped other candidates with well-known, Democratic names — Commissioner Jim Wansacz lost in 2015, Commissioner Patrick O'Malley in 2019, former Dunmore Mayor Patrick "Nibs" Loughney in 2017 and 2021.

The shakier political terrain for well-known Democrats, not to mention scandal, allowed Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, an Oregon native, to win a special election for mayor in 2019, and become the city's first female mayor. She defeated three candidates with deeper roots in local politics. Loughney, who lost the mayor's office in 2017, tried to win it back, but lost in 2021 to Max Conway. (Loughney won a Democratic Dunmore council nomination Tuesday).

In 2021, Cognetti won a full four-year term by walloping City Controller John Murray, himself a former city Democratic chairman with deep ties to the local Democratic power structure. Perhaps less noticed Tuesday was J.R. Refice's loss to Angela Rempe Jones in the Democratic county treasurer's race. Refice is the grandson of the late Commissioner Ray Alberigi, part of that long line of old-guard Democrats.

"They were a great generation and loyal generation of Democrats and look ... I came up in that era," county Democratic Party chairman Chris Patrick said. "And what I see out there anymore, sometimes I don't even recognize, and that's when you start thinking maybe the game is passing you by."

In recent years, Patrick said he has watched younger runners join the traditional St. Ubaldo Day Race of the Saints.

"All those young guys running in the St. Ubaldo race, they were all for McGloin and Gaughan," he said.

On Tuesday, Democratic voters chose as their commissioner nominees teacher and former Scranton City Council President Bill Gaughan and former Penn State and NFL quarterback and current sportscaster Matt McGloin.

With the party moving on from the old guard, Patrick said he isn't worried.

"I think we have a great ticket heading into November," he said. "If there is a youth movement out there, well, man, we have it, don't we?"

Gaughan is 36, McGloin, 33, Conway, 31, Cognetti, 42.

Notarianni is 69.

Republicans chose Commissioner Chris Chermak and Mayfield Council President Diana Campbell. Chermak is 59 and a commissioner more than three years, and Campbell is 47, and a Mayfield councilwoman for almost eight years. In a sign of the desire for new blood on the Republican side, they defeated Republicans trying political comebacks, former Scranton City Councilman Brian Reap and former Commissioner Laureen Cummings.

Notarianni said Friday he feels a sense of relief because serving as commissioner means carrying a lot of responsibility.

"The world's changed," he said. "Hopefully, it's for the better."

He doesn't view his defeat as the end of an era.

"I don't think about it like that at all," he said. "I think maybe it's the beginning of a new one."

Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.